Farmers and agricultural researchers often measure quality parameters such as, for example, moisture, digestibility, starch content, oil content, sugar content, protein content, and/or neutral detergent fiber (NDF) content. Such quality parameters may be measured using sensor devices mounted on a harvesting device (such as a chopper or combine, for example).
Sensor devices (such as near-infrared reflection (NIR) devices, for example) used to measure harvest quality parameters are often exposed to the elements (such as rain, dust, and light). Because the output of such sensor devices may be affected by slight changes in environmental parameters (such as light, temperature, and humidity, for example), sensor devices carried in conventional sensor device mounts on harvesting devices often record inaccurate measurements of quality parameters. Moreover, conventional sensor device housings configured to carry such sensor devices do not include mechanisms and/or facilities for allowing checks and/or verification procedures that may allow a user to ensure that the sensor devices are operating to specifications during operation of the harvesting device.
Furthermore, conventional methods for referencing and/or validating the sensor devices may be disruptive to the measurement of the quality parameter and/or may result in substantially inaccurate data. For example, referencing (such as “manual zeroing,” for example) and/or validating of sensor devices (such as NIR devices, for example) carried by harvesting devices is typically time consuming and interrupts operations because the harvesting device must be stopped each time the sensor device is referenced and/or validated. Thus, due to time constraints, referencing and/or validation procedures are often not performed often enough to produce optimal harvest quality parameter data.
Some conventional devices for mounting sensor devices on a harvesting device may include chain-driven rotational devices for moving a sensor device about a central axis such that the sensor device may be selectively aligned with one or more verification references (such as, for example, a white, black, and/or colored tile having known reflectance characteristics). However, because the rotation of such conventional devices is sometimes imprecise, the device sometimes fails to optimally position the sensor device (such as an NIR device) relative to the verification reference. For example, in some cases, it is crucial that the sensor device is positioned at the same position relative to a maximum reflectance reference (such as a white reference tile, for example) as each position on a given reference tile may have slight variations in shade (and therefore, in reflectance). In addition, imprecise movement of the sensor device may also result in an erroneous attempt to reference the sensor device outside the boundaries of the reference tile. Thus, such conventional devices may result in the improper and/or incomplete referencing of the sensor device.
Therefore, in order to facilitate the economical, reliable, and accurate measurement of quality parameters, there is a need in the art for a system, device, and method that allows for accurate referencing of a quality parameter sensor device mounted on a harvesting device (such as a chopper or combine, for example). Furthermore, there exists a need for a system, device, and method that allows for control of environmental parameters in the measurement environment. There also exists a need for a system, device, and method that allows for real-time validation of the functionality of the sensor device (using, for example, reference crop samples having known characteristics). There further exists a need for a system, device, and method that allows for precise control of the movement of the sensor device relative to one or more referencing and/or validation standards.